The present invention relates to mobile communications over communication networks.
Conventional radio communication systems, such as a 2nd generation system, e.g. a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) or a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) system, e.g. a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) or Long Term Evolution (LTE), provide a respective certain service, e.g. Quality of Service (QoS), to its connected mobile terminals or user entities.
For example, conventional wireless mobile networks offered and offer services, like voice services or data services, for which there was no necessity or use for differentiating the type of devices used by the end user. A reason for this is that there was not a big variety in applications run by these devices.
Further, with the availability and fast growth of mobile broadband capabilities, a great variety of different applications become available on a growing range of mobile devices. Such new mobile devices, which may be also called smart phones, may behave quite differently compared to previous generations of mobile devices, so called traditional phones. Essentially, the smart phones are a kind of mobile computers capable of running a variety of applications making use of wireless technology. For example, for each relevant application and according to the mobile device or the application parameters configuration, smart phones may probe the communication network regularly and periodically, instead of just relying on the intervention or action of the user for starting a particular service.
An example for such an application is e-mail. In this example, the client application running on the smart phones may connect automatically and periodically to the server to check for new mails or to synchronize a number of folders, like contacts, e-mails or the like.
Further examples may include the applications of so called social networks, wherein the client may automatically and periodically connect to other network entities to check for their status, e.g. the status of contacts, messages or the like.
Above mentioned applications may create small packet data sessions periodically and frequently. As a result, they generate a great number of signalling messages. Thus, a direct impact on a communication network is that the rules commonly applied to dimension the communication network for a user plane, i.e. data traffic, and a control plane, i.e. signalling, may be not longer applicable, in particular because the introduction of smart phones capable of running above mentioned applications may create unforeseen capacity problems in the communication network, especially in the control plane. An obvious solution of increasing the network capacity may be expensive, in particular in requiring more hardware and software capacities.